Fender<\/a> Electric XII<\/p>\nAmps<\/p>\n
Fender \u201965 Princeton ReverbFender Princeton \u201cTV Front\u201dFender tweed Deluxe<\/p>\n
Effects<\/p>\n
Echo Fix EF-P2 Spring ReverbPete Cornish NG-3 fuzz<\/p>\n
The album, he adds, is \u201cnot like bubblegum\u2014it\u2019s just comfortable and happy. I\u2019m calling out my hometown by name, which I do a lot, but I haven\u2019t done it in an album title. If I feel comfortable and happy, in a lot of ways, I am. As happy as I can be, with this crazy world.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m no Frank Sinatra,\u201d Vile continues. \u201cI just feel a little more comfortable. My voice is relaxed, but it\u2019s got some good melodies and some good emoting. And then electric guitars\u2014a lot of times, I end up acoustic in the studio. It\u2019s been a minute before I got a bunch of good electric-guitar solos. Just from touring and stretching out a little more, I finally captured that in the studio.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike 2013\u2019s \u201cWakin On a Pretty Day,\u201d a small hit that has become one of Vile\u2019s signature songs, Philadelphia leans minimalist. \u201cWakin On a Pretty Day, that\u2019s like one-million guitars,\u201d Vile says. \u201cSome people say that record of mine is kind of epic, but this one\u2019s more organically Neil Young-style, where it\u2019s, like, one guitar solo.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the way he combines downbeat music with upbeat guitar sounds, Vile gets briefly technical: \u201cYou leave the high E open all the time. Things like that make things dreamy. If you play an F, and leave the high E open, it\u2019s a dreamy sound. So maybe the combination is, you\u2019re getting the pretty melancholy thing, but there\u2019s so much sunniness in the other notes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m making a living off my music\u2014that\u2019s the beauty. I\u2019m happy about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
One stretch of \u201cEvery time I look at you,\u201d a love song, demonstrates this happy-sad contradiction: \u201cI flew close to the sun \/ and I had a lot of fun \/ Then I guess I had to come down,\u201d Vile sings, his voice surrounded by xylophone plinks and upbeat guitar arpeggios. \u201cPunishment fitting the crime.\u201d The album feels like arriving somewhere after a difficult journey. Vile has two daughters, 13-year-old Delphine and 16-year-old Awilda, and they both play multiple instruments, focusing on the harp, tutored by family friend Mary Lattimore, a Vile collaborator and former Philadelphian. \u201cThey can just pick anything up,\u201d Vile says. \u201cGirl-dads are the best. Daughters are the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
OKV Central was an important source of the comfort that inspired the album, a fact that he brings up frequently. Langellotti, a longtime Vile bassist who is now his primary engineer, helped the singer-songwriter achieve the studio\u2019s ambience\u2014it\u2019s named for singer Tompall Glaser\u2019s Nashville facility, nicknamed Hillbilly Central, where the late Waylon Jennings and others helped build the foundation for what became the outlaw-country movement in the \u201970s. \u201cI love Waylon. I wear him on my shirt a lot because he\u2019s the coolest and the realest,\u201d Vile says. \u201c[OKV Central] is a place where I could be real and not have other people telling me how it\u2019s done\u2014and surround myself with people who want to be there. It\u2019s my version of my outlaw era.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Photo by Eleanor Petry<\/p>\n
OKV Central is the kind of musical space where friends have the time and trust to conduct experiments to achieve the perfect sound. One of Vile\u2019s bandmates, keyboardist Matthew Jugenheimer, came up with the handclaps in the closing track, \u201cAvalanches of Snow,\u201d by listening to Ol\u2019 Dirty Bastard\u2019s double-clapping 1999 hit with Kelis, \u201cGot Your Money.\u201d Vile sat at his desk, but every time the pair tried to record the handclaps, he says, \u201cIt didn\u2019t sound like that. It\u2019s the way your head hears something.\u201d They moved around, shifted the mike position and employed a Zoom recorder until they achieved prime ODB-ness.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy band members are all my good friends. The band is growing. A lot more weight off my shoulders,\u201d Vile says. \u201cHappy to be among my people and among my family and be able to combine the two.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vile mostly produced Philadelphia himself, with help from the Violators, including Langellotti, Jugenheimer, drummer Kyle Spence, and guitarist Jesse Trbovrich, as well as longtime producer Rob Schnapf. At first, at OKV Central, Vile was \u201cexcited and hands-on and learning the gear\u2014and I could run it all if I have to.\u201d But he found turning on computer screens \u201ckind of zaps my creativity,\u201d so he ceded much of the technical details to others. \u201cI like to record simply, from a four-track or a reel-to-reel or a Zoom recorder, or even on my phone. Get it down when you\u2019re feeling it. Any way you can. Always record,\u201d he says. \u201cBut it\u2019s definitely complicated. Every one of my bandmates has been an engineer. I joke that people aren\u2019t put in my band for what they play\u2014it\u2019s more they\u2019ve got their hands in everything. That\u2019s what I like.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLaid back is ultimately where I want to be, but there\u2019s a lot of stress to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The non-technical ingredient for Philadelphia was, of course, Philadelphia itself. Vile is a prolific reader, and his studio is filled with books. One is John Szwed\u2019s Space Is the Place, a biography of Sun Ra, who was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and died there in 1993, but spent much of his career working in Philly\u2014he\u2019s so associated with the city that his longtime saxophonist, Marshall Allen, now in his 90s, still lives in the Sun Ra house, not far from Vile\u2019s home. \u201cI just loved that book. It was like my bible,\u201d Vile says. \u201c[Ra] is from Saturn, and what he did for his people, and just his output in general\u2014he was a fascinating character. You could visit his various ghosts around here.\u201d During the phone interview, Vile refers to reading Mo\u2019 Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove, the autobiography of Ahmir \u201cQuestlove\u201d Thompson of the Philadelphia-born Roots, and the fact that Ice-T borrowed Schoolly D\u2019s \u201cP.S.K. \u2018What Does It Mean?\u2019\u201d for 1986\u2019s \u201c6 in the Mornin\u2019,\u201d which inspired the beginnings of gangsta rap.<\/p>\n
Although the Roots became famous out of Philly just a decade or so before Vile did, the singer-songwriter has seen the hip-hop band from The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon only once, in 2012, when both headlined the Sasquatch Music Festival in Washington state. \u201cThey just blew my mind. They didn\u2019t stop,\u201d Vile recalls. \u201cAnd [lead rapper] Black Thought was so cool to me and my brother backstage. I\u2019ve got to make a point to get to a Roots Picnic or something.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Photo by Eleanor Petry<\/p>\n
Befitting his public musical image, Vile speaks in a slow, friendly tone, as if you expect him to start puffing on a vape during the call. (Unprompted, he refers to himself multiple times as \u201claid back.\u201d) But in a 2013 Pitchfork interview, Vile quoted his producer, John Agnello, suggesting some of this is carefully constructed: \u201cI\u2019ve never associated you with being laid back whatsoever,\u201d Agnello told him. So what\u2019s the secret to making music that sounds laid back while not actually being laid back?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s, like, a persona I give off from the stage\u2014but behind the scenes, anyone who works with me knows you\u2019ve got to push to get it right. I\u2019m sort of pushing for it to come off laid back,\u201d Vile says. \u201cLaid back is ultimately where I want to be, but there\u2019s a lot of stress to get there.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re trying to chill and relax in general. Even when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was sit in the shade,\u201d he continues. \u201cAnd it doesn\u2019t really change. You\u2019re still trying to get out in the sun and relax. But there\u2019s a lot of work to get to that point sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early in his career, Vile had to struggle. He was a forklift operator in his early 20s, while putting out cassettes and CD-Rs on the side. The employer was Eagle Air Freight, in Everett, Massachusetts, near Boston, where he lived with his future wife, Suzanne, who was in graduate school at the time. He unloaded tractor trailers. \u201cThat\u2019s the kind of ball-busting job I had,\u201d Vile recalls. \u201cLately, I\u2019m watching The Wire, Season 2\u2014[the freight job] was not unlike the docks. I said, \u2018I\u2019m never going to drive a forklift again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Later, when Vile and Suzanne returned to his hometown, he found work at Philadelphia Brewing Company\u2014and one of the jobs on the premises was forklift operator. \u201cBecause I was so good at the forklift, it\u2019s like, you get a break from the other job,\u201d Vile says. \u201cI loved driving a forklift there. They were definitely impressed by my forklift skills.\u201d He worked at the brewing company from 2003 to 2009, when he signed with Matador as a solo artist, and life changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pretty positive I\u2019m not gonna have to go back to driving a forklift,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Schoolly D sent Kurt Vile a link. \u201cSomebody stole my fake fur coat,\u201d the pioneering gangsta rapper told…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[72251,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-211101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-kurt-vile","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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